Orphénica Lyra / José Miguel Moreno MÚSICA EN EL QUIJOTE

We stand before Glossa's distinct and definitive contribution to the 4th centennial celebration of the Quixote: this is no "music in the times of...", nor an association of a composer to the myth on the sole basis of their coincidence in time, nor a work inspired by the novel, but precisely that which everybody felt to be missing: a kind of "soundtrack" for the Quixote, in which the musical references which pepper Cervantes great work and some of his Novelas Ejemplares are collected and lovingly performed. Romances and songs alternate with dances such as chaconnes, folías and jácaras, creating a beautiful and accurate musical landscape in which the reader will easily locate our hero's adventures.

This disc also marks the reencounter of José Miguel Moreno with his renewed group, Orphénica Lyra, after some rather quiet years on the discographic front. Nuria Rial, with a voice that soars to sublime heights of beauty, sensitivity, and agility, shares the scene with a surprising Raquel Andueza, and both sopranos are joined by the voice of Spain's probably best countertenor of the day, Jordi Domenech. On the instrumental level, an ensemble that knows how to convey the taste of an era like no other: Eligio Quinteiro, Fernando Paz, Fahmi Alqhai, and Álvaro Garrido, conducted from the vihuela by a Moreno in full command of his powers. (GLOSSA)

More Hispano / Vicente Parrilla YR A OYDO

Yr a oydo is an old Spanish expression for "going by heart" and is the name of MORE HISPANO's latest innovative project lead by the recorder player Vicente Parrilla. The young Spanish Ensemble presents Ancient Music of early 17th century Spain and Italy, completely improvised but not without cherishing the skills of historic performance - a goal that is as ambitious as it is unique.

MORE HISPANO holds ideal qualifications for this kind of music: the musicians have been in the business for many years, some of them performing together since childhood. Most have since come to belong to the best and most innovative specialists of their generation in Ancient Music in Spain. They perform solely on historic instruments and artful replica of instruments that were in use in the 17th century. The soprano Raquel Andueza not only performs with MORE HISPANO but also with a variety of internationally renowned ensembles and projects, among them L'Arpeggiata under Christina Pluhar.

This recording is the outcome of the musicians' experimentation and struggle with the historical standards, of their longstanding shared performances, and the playful interaction with their instruments, peer musicians and not least themselves. The aim therein was not to gain distance from the original historic compositions but an intense and often very personal involvement with those works which frequently leads to surprising results.

The record at hand stands in the tradition of the practice of improvisation: not one piece was played twice in equal manner, no solo was predictable, no one knew at the beginning of a piece when or how it would end.

As a result, the track titles are not work titles as such, but much rather hint at the structure of the piece (e.g. "Passacaglia" as a form of dance), or suggest the employed compositions (e.g. "Guardame las vacas"). In many ways, the style of making music here relates to Jazz, and oftentimes the inherent and uncompromising quest for emotion and expression will be more familiar to the fan of Jazz than it might be to the admirer of Ancient Music. It is this gap in today's musical landscape that Yr a oydo aspires to bridge. (Carpe Diem Records)

Christina Pluhar / L'Arpeggiata MEDITERRANEO

This release by the early music group L'Arpeggiata and its leader, lutenist Christina Pluhar, seems to encompass two separate goals, only partly laid out in the handsomely illustrated booklet notes. First is an illustration of the idea that, as the notes put it, "the sea does not separate cultures, it connects them." Jordi Savall and others have released albums that cut across a wide swath of Mediterranean lands from Turkey to Spain (and around to Portugal), finding in them a traditional music that responds well to improvisatory practice, shows the continuing influence of musical practices from the Arab and Ottoman worlds, and reflects a lyric impulse and a tendency toward accompanied vocal song. Pluhar adds different singers and musicians onto her core group according to the national origin of the music, a noteworthy and innovative practice that gets the listener to hear commonalities and differences in a fresh way. The second goal is more unusual: Pluhar and company explore the common roots of these practices in Greek music, demonstrated by the persistence of the Greek language and a large repertory of orally transmitted song in southern Italy, on the Salento peninsula on the east coast of southern Italy, and also in Calabria. These songs are sung in a language called Griko, essentially an Italian dialect of Greek. This music, and even the language itself, is sufficiently obscure to attract attention to the album by themselves, and "Greco-Salentino" songs, with everything transliterated and translated in the booklet, are lovely. The album's perhaps of a bit more interest to speculative world music fans than to serious devotees of old Mediterranean song: Pluhar's female vocalists don't have quite the power needed to take command of the material. But the instrumental group L'Arpeggiata is a remarkably flexible, breathing instrument, and the entire project gets major points for sheer originality. (James Manheim)